PROXY IN APACHE HTTP SERVER

Hi all, from this post I’m going to talk about proxy in Apache HTTP server. When talking about the proxies, there are two main types of proxies to talk about.

Forward Proxy

Reverse Proxy

FORWARD PROXY

In forward proxy, proxy resides on the client side. Client knows about the server. But client request has to go through the proxy. Proxy will redirect the request to the server. This is useful in situations where we want to block some sites, also we can use the proxy for cache purposes as well. It will reduce the response time and the bandwidth as well.

After getting the idea about the forward proxy concept, let’s see how to configure the forward proxy on Apache HTTP server.

REVERSE PROXY

Now let’s see the reverse proxy. Here the proxy resides on the server side. All client requests will come to the proxy directly. Client’s have no idea about the server. They request everything from the proxy. Proxy then redirect these requests to the server.

After getting the idea about the reverse proxy concept, let’s see how to configure the reverse proxy on Apache HTTP server.

LOAD BALANCER

This is another important topic to talk about. Let’s get an idea about the load balancer. When thousand’s of requests come to a server, some times it will crash. Won’t be able to serve the client requests. Response time can be increased dramatically. Because of these reasons we can use a load balancer. Load balancer works with the reverse proxy technique. It will take client requests from the proxy and then redirect them to different servers. There are few algorithms in used to find the server to which the request should go.

After getting the idea about the load balancer concept, let’s see how to configure the load balancer on Apache HTTP server.